Quad-core processors are only the beginning of what a revitalized Intel has to offer, the company's top executives said here Sept. 26. The chip maker will deliver in November its first quad-core processors - chips that incorporate four processors each - for both desktops and servers, said CEO Paul Otellini here, in an opening keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum. The quad-core chips themselves will offer up to 70 percent greater performance in desktops and 50 percent in servers.

bogomipz has the answer pretty well nailed. The multi-threaded nature of the windows makes porting apps from "traditional" architectures a pain, but makes your UI feel responsive even when the app is pegging the CPU. The window's threads are also higher priority than most apps, which helps some too.

I just finished multi-threading a linux app and I really missed the BeOS threading API... :-D